China: USA Must Take More Syrian Refugees; We’ll Take Zero, Thanks

“The United States should take its responsibility in the disheartening refugee crisis in Europe as its controversial Middle East policies resulted in wars and chaos that displaced large numbers of people,” hectors China’s state-run news agency, Xinhua.

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They dwell on the photo of the drowned Syrian toddler — who was not in the process of fleeing from Syria when he died — and the horrid deaths of 70 refugees in a smuggler’s truck in Austria.

China is not generally noted for its genial indulgence of lawbreakers, especially when there are national security implications, but it expects the United States to throw caution to the winds. “Even though it has remained relatively ‘quiet’ on this matter, the United States actually has an inescapable responsibility on what happens today in Europe and the Middle East,” Xinhua pontificates.

It is anyone’s guess why they decided to put the word “quiet” in scare quotes, or what they are even talking about, given that those Syrian refugees are a major topic of conversation — and a point of contention between both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. Xinhua does, however, lay out what it means by “inescapable responsibility,” and it’s extremely rough on President Obama’s foreign policy:

The United States has made interventions, directly or indirectly, to overthrow Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, among other ousted leaders in Middle East.

Savage wars have scourged Iraq, Syria, Yemen and other countries as terrorist attacks take place on a daily basis. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians have died in bloody conflicts, while millions have been forced to flee their hometown.

Wars and anarchy in the region have clearly pointed to the failure of the U.S. policies of the Middle East, a mistake that the only super power of the world is reluctant to correct.

Now leaders of the European Union are between a rock and a hard place as the public is urging for more aids for the refugees while the EU countries are having difficulties dealing the flooding of refugees. However, the United States has done nothing substantial to deal with the problem.

“Nothing substantial,” unless you count that $4 billion in aid and a few thousand more Syrian refugees than China is willing to take in. Xinhua cites the 1,500 Syrian asylum-seekers announced by the Obama Administration earlier this year, without mentioning that number is already set to double, and probably triple. Ominously, the Chinese news service pegs the total refugee pool in Syria at four million.

“As a solution, peace and stability should be established in the region,” Xinhua concludes. “But it can not be done unless the United States shoulders its responsibility and corrects its mistakes.”

If you’re waiting for some massive groundswell of public sympathy for refugees to change the Chinese Politburo’s mind about settling some Syrians in their territory, the Hong Kong Free Pressnotes that the Chinese public is “overwhelmingly against the idea,” because they think “China is not responsible for turbulence in the Middle East, many Chinese people are still living in poverty and that the refugees won’t want to come to China anyway.”

That latter point sounds pretty dismal, and indeed some Chinese spoke poorly of their own nation, with one arguing that “China cannot provide refuge, because we the Chinese look more like refugees”… but others pointed out the refugees were more interested in migrating to the generous welfare states of Europe.

There aresome Chinese in favor of taking in refugees, however, including one forum poster quoted by the HKFP who argued “the Chinese government made a vow to contribute to world peace and prosperity during last week’s World War Two victory day parade, and now it’s time to deliver on that promise.”